Episode 10 Update - 06/01/20 (Patreon)

Hello all, 

First off - some news.  One of my patrons, Kip, has been corresponding with me and is working on a Discord server exclusive to Starter Squad patrons.  Hopefully, we'll see that come to fruition soon.  I encourage you to join in.  Discord groups usually aren't my thing, but I'll definitely try to hang out there once in a while.

Anyway - a good amount of progress this week.  I had sessions with the rest of the voice actors.  Tomorrow morning, I will have my very last session where I'll be recording and re-recording a lot of stuff with the lead actor of this episode, and I'll have the final mix of everything.  But now I have a clear picture of the entire episode with the timing of the dialogue.  Episode 10 has an approximate runtime of 23 minutes.  Thank God.  I was worried it would be too long, but 23 minutes is just about where I want it to be in terms of workload.

Now that I have enough audio, I've started doing the layout passes of the first scene.  By tomorrow, I'll have enough to start laying out the whole episode.    There are seven scenes total, with varying degrees of difficulty.   When all the layout passes are finished, I can hopefully start getting more animators on board to speed up the process.  I am thinking that in the coming weeks, I'll be doing what amounts to an outline of the entire episode, then using that outline to dole out the character animation work next month.  Given that the character animation takes the most time, I'm hoping the extra funding will genuinely speed up the process if I can hire it all out efficiently. 

I'll most definitely be passing everything over to my sound guy tomorrow so he can get a jump start on all the sound work.  I've also been continuing to correspond with one of my animators who has made significant progress in his cycle work.  By the time he's finished, I'll have even more work for him.  

Also, now that you've all given me this month's Patron funds, I have enough to hire the 3D environment artist that I want, and I'll be corresponding with them this week to acquire some really solid set pieces, as well as another artist to hopefully do some character work.  I truly appreciate the opportunity you've given me to bring this project to life in its best form.   

Speaking of which, since it is now the first of the month, here is the current standing for "Top Donors" as listed in the Patreon Rewards: 

Gonzalo Malaga Cardoza

DarkHenrik

Syrus Coy

Brandon

Nauel Octavio Tejada

Benny Yau

Sno Comics

Dreux Ferrano Jr.

Charles Hoskins

Ryan Fleck

Earoist

Thank you all very much.

Shipp